Take Five

by Batten, Jack;

  “But the idea of cameras in the museum,” I said. “That’s to make sure no thieves’re prowling the place in the middle of the night?”

  “Lot of paranoia in the gallery world these days, my lad,” Charles said. “Even affects us in ceramics.”

  “There’s good value in the pieces on these floors, huh?” I said. “What do you figure Company of Fools would go at? How much we talking about?”

  “The price if somebody swiped it? That the bee you’ve got in your bonnet, Crang old chappie?”

  “Idle curiosity, Charles.”

  “It’s academic, you know. Fools isn’t leaving its home in the Levin.”

  “Humour a neophyte. Hundreds of thousands?”

  Charles made a sputtering sound. “Good lord, old bean, millions. They’re priceless, those twenty-seven pieces taken altogether. But if you’re talking about some fishy business with the entire Company of Fools, then you’re into eight figures.”

  Charles and I stepped away from the reception counter and got ready to leave the museum. I was still thinking about the size of the numbers Charles had just hazarded a guess at.

  Charles said, “Why do I get the feeling there’s more to your curiosity about Fools than idleness?”

  “For now,” I said, “that’s for me to know and you to guess, me old lad.”

  24

  On Tuesday morning, I got to the office before nine. I made enough coffee to fill three cups, one for Sam across the hall, two for me. The measure of water to coffee wasn’t quite right. Little too strong in the resulting taste. The day before, it’d been a touch on the weak side. My coffee-making was a work in progress. But fun.

  I put in the first of my two daily phone calls to Annie. She said the curator at the Columbia archives was treating her generously. “A swell dame,” Annie called her. Annie’s slang was showing the influence of a 1930s Edward Everett Horton vocabulary. I told her about my surprise that Charles spoke with an English accent. “You should hear his wife,” Annie said. “Must’ve been born within the sound of Bow Bells, she’s practically impenetrable in the vocal department.” We signed off with expressions of love and yearning. Annie said it seemed a decade since she’d left our little home. She’d try to get back earlier than Monday, but that was probably doubtful. She had a treasure trove of Hortoniana to go through.

  I worked on the files of cases I’d been neglecting for the past couple of weeks. These concerned miscreants still to come to court, probably sometime in the next months. I drank my two cups of coffee, and answered the first phone call of the day at eleven-fifteen.

  “I Spy here, Crang.” I Spy Griffith sounded pumped. “Much police action across the street this morning.”

  “Tell me why,” I said. “Also who and what.”

  “A death, I’m positive. Police cars arrived an hour ago, sirens blaring. The policemen must have called an ambulance. It pulled up about ten minutes later. That brought more sirens. Everybody’s still there. I’m looking through my window as I speak to you. Yellow police tape blocking off number 32. Three cars of plainclothes people got here thirty minutes ago. Homicide detectives, I would wager.”

  “What about the who? Anything to identify a victim, assuming there is one?”

  “Not yet,” I Spy said. “But I’ll tell you who a key person in the who category is. My friend Ernie.”

  I needed a moment to process the personnel in I Spy’s world. “The postman?” I said.

  “He’s the one who called the police, that’s what I surmise. After the police and everybody got here, a half hour or a little further in, a Canada Post truck dropped off another postman outside 32. He waited till a plainclothes person, a woman, brought out Ernie’s bag of mail. This second postman is finishing the route.”

  “I’ll wager you buttonholed the new guy.”

  “Very close-mouthed, this second fellow,” I Spy said. “I doubt he was told much anyway. Just that Ernie needed to help the police, and wouldn’t be doing any more mail delivery today. That’s what this fellow told me. Name’s Gus.”

  “Thank you for the tip, I Spy. Appreciate it. Soon as I hang up, I’m on my way out there.”

  “That’s how I expected you to respond, Crang.” I Spy sounded bubbly with enthusiasm. “Don’t try driving your car all the way into Highbury. Media’s taken over the street.”

  “One thing to keep in mind till I get to your place,” I said. “The police will be canvassing the Highbury houses. They’ll want to know what you saw across the street last night.”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Wait a minute, I Spy,” I said. “You can’t lie. Not to the cops.”

  “It’s no lie, Crang,” Griffith said. “My two children and their spouses came for dinner last night. We got to reminiscing about the kids’ lives around the house when they were young and their mother was alive. My son-in-law got bored stiff. The rest of us kept talking till midnight.”

  “You didn’t glance out the window? Maybe spot the black Navigator?”

  “Didn’t take so much as a tiny peek.”

  “What about your 3 a.m. urination? You look out the window then?”

  “Slept right through till seven this morning.”

  “An atypical night for you.”

  “I have to tell you I woke up this morning with a strange emptiness. As if part of my life had gone missing.”

  “Turns out somebody else’s life may have gone missing permanently.”

  “Exactly my reaction.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to ask I Spy or warn him about.

  “Heading your way,” I said, and hung up.

  25

  I made good time to the Kingsway, parked my car on one of the back streets and hiked a couple of long blocks to Highbury. Three TV trucks clogged the block, one each from CFTO, Citytv and the local CBC channel. People wearing makeup and holding microphones stood around talking to one another; they were the on-camera reporters gossiping, keeping loose, ready for the moment their field producers figured there was something worth updating. Camera guys, sound people, makeup artists, all of them waited for the action. A truck selling coffee and sandwiches had opened for service, doing rush business. A whole village had sprung up on Highbury, all in the interests of a dead person. I was getting antsy, wondering who the victim was.

  There was no need for me to knock on I Spy’s door. It was open, and he was standing on the porch. We shook hands, then he led me into the living room.

  A man in a Canada Post shirt was slumped in the chair I’d sat in when I first visited the Griffith house. He was about forty with a small paunch, a goatee and a look of exhaustion. He was gulping coffee.

  “You must be Ernie,” I said to him. “I’m Crang.”

  “Mr. Griffith’s been talking about you,” Ernie said.

  I went over and shook Ernie’s hand. He didn’t get up. His hand felt clammy.

  “You’ve had a bad jolt,” I said. Nice line, Crang, I thought. Deep stuff.

  I Spy stepped into the conversation. “The police let Ernie take a break, but not go home yet, not talk to the press.”

  I said to Ernie, “Mr. Griffith told you I have a client involved in some of the events been going on in number 32?”

  “Grace Nguyen?” Ernie asked. His eyes went to me with something sudden in them, something very much like shock.

  “Grace’s the victim?” I said.

  “I didn’t think she was dead when I first saw her,” Ernie said. He talked with a lot of hesitations. “Then I got closer. She was lying in the trees a few yards in from the driveway. Soon as I saw the way her face was broke up, her eyes staring wide open like that, I knew nobody looked that way could be alive.”

  My legs felt as if they could turn wobbly. I sat down. I’d never had a client killed before. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

  “Coffee, Crang?” I Spy asked in a soft voice.

  “Please,” I said.

  I Spy poured a cup from a carafe on the living r
oom table.

  I took a swallow and looked over at Ernie.

  “You mind going through this with me?” I said to him. “All in confidence. I won’t use your information for reasons other than my professional connection to Grace.”

  I seemed to be rallying from the first effects of the news.

  “The reason I was there in the driveway in the first place,” Ernie said, “I was just making my usual delivery.”

  “About what time?” I asked.

  “Not long after ten, maybe earlier,” Ernie said. “Funny thing this morning, not ha-ha funny, but coincidental funny, I delivered the magazine she gets about glass or whatever it is, bowls, cups and so on.”

  “Ceramics Monthly.”

  “That’s the one,” Ernie said. “Never met the lady on deliveries, never laid eyes on Grace Nguyen, but I felt I knew her. You get that way about all your customers, just from seeing their names on the envelopes. But most of these people I usually run into in person from time to time. Grace Nguyen, I only knew her strictly from her name. Which was distinctive, specially in this neighbourhood.”

  “You ever meet anyone else at number 32?”

  “Not a soul,” Ernie said. He drank more coffee, still gulping. “Not anybody as far back as I can remember being on the route.”

  “When you walked up the driveway this morning,” I said, “on your way to put the magazine through the mail slot, you didn’t see anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Not the body, that’s for sure,” Ernie said. “Might not have noticed anything on the way out of the driveway either except a couple squirrels made a heck of a racket. Just chasing one another in the trees and bushes. Couldn’t help looking over, that’s when I saw this flash of bright blue colour on the ground. Turned out to be Grace Nguyen’s blouse.”

  Ernie stopped to take a deep quavery breath. “So, like I said earlier, I went a few steps into the trees, far enough to see the woman’s face smashed up. I backed away from there fast as I could. Got out my cell and hit 911.”

  “No doubt in your mind the woman on the ground was dead?”

  “Wasn’t going back in to see for myself. But later in the driveway, when everybody started arriving, I heard a medical guy from an ambulance tell a plainclothes detective, ‘This one’s been chilling a few hours.’ Something like that. ‘Chilling’ his word for sure.”

  “A few hours?” I said.

  “Way he put it.”

  “One big question, Ernie. We’re supposing the dead person is Grace. But have the cops confirmed the identity, far as you know?”

  “Kind of wondering about that myself,” Ernie said. “I’m the one told the officers I delivered the ceramics magazine to the house in the name of Grace Nguyen. Poor woman on the ground was Asian, so I sort of connected the two things in my own head and said so.”

  “The police had no other verification?”

  “They went back and forth on their cellphones about who she was, the ‘vic,’ they kept referring to her. But nobody told me in so many words, yeah, you’re right, the dead person’s Grace Nguyen.”

  “You didn’t overhear anything specific about identity?”

  “Why would they want me to know what they’re thinking?”

  I Spy had a question for Ernie. “What about a handbag? Did you notice if Grace had one?”

  “Oh boy, Mr. Griffith, the state I was in, I doubt I would have seen a steamer trunk if she was lugging around one of those.”

  I had my own ideas about Grace and handbags. From overhearing her conversation with Rocky during my confinement in the garden shed, I felt pretty certain Grace didn’t make a habit of carrying anything like a handbag or purse. A makeup kit seemed the limit of her carry-alongs on her trips inside number 32. I suspected it was a case of Grace wanting nothing on her person that gave away her identity. I’d heard her say so myself.

  I sat back in my chair, thinking Ernie had been wrung dry of information. What came next? I turned to Griffith.

  “Cops talk to you, I Spy?” I asked.

  “A uniformed woman did. Asked me about last night, and I told her what I told you. I was entertaining my kids the whole evening.”

  “Anything else come up? More general questions?”

  “Did I know who lived at 32? I answered no.”

  “No deeper than that?”

  I Spy shook his head. “I expect a real detective will come calling later. Somebody from Homicide. When that happens, should I mention your involvement, Crang?”

  “Answer whatever questions you’re asked, but don’t volunteer anything they don’t bring up. No harm mentioning me. I’ll eventually be speaking to them on my own anyway. Me being Grace’s lawyer.”

  “That what you’re going to do next, talk with the police?”

  “First thing for me to do,” I said, “I need to break the news to Grace’s husband.”

  “The murdered woman was married?” I Spy said, looking and sounding astounded. “Can’t say why, but I didn’t imagine she had a husband.”

  “Unless I tell him, he won’t be finding out about Grace anytime soon. Not if she left no easy clues lying around about who she was.”

  “That’s your thinking?”

  “For the time being.”

  “A husband.” I Spy shook his head. “I know what it’s like to lose a wife. Poor fellow.”

  “You’re right, I Spy,” I said. “The guy’s world is about to get rocked.”

  26

  Looking for the triplex Annie and I had seen Grace go into, I turned south off Bloor on the wrong street. There was no triplex the whole length of the block. The next north-south street to the east was a one-way coming north. On the street after that, I spotted the triplex. A cop car was parked out front.

  I sat in the Mercedes and waited. It would have been too much of a coincidence if the cops were calling on anybody in the building except Lazslo. Lazslo must be their guy, which meant I was wrong about Grace and her secrecy. Somehow the police figured out her address fast off the mark. But I was still ahead of them on Grace’s connections inside the ceramics business, the scam or whatever it was I imagined she was involved in. If I hung around, and talked to Lazslo, maybe I could add to my store of information. Maybe I could sort out her killing and pin down the murderer. Maybe I could find a way to collect the seventy-five grand.

  The money kept coming up in my thinking. Was I letting my mercenary side control the rest of me? A woman had been murdered, and almost my first thoughts were of how much she owed me? Maybe I should recalibrate the whole mess in a light that was marginally more flattering to my good self. Something like, I solve the murder, then let the chips fall where they may? That seemed a fair and moral approach, the chips in this case being the seventy-five Gs.

  I waited a half hour before the cops came out of the triplex. One was young and female, a brunette, in uniform. The other was an older guy, more portly than detectives were supposed to be, wearing a dark suit and tie, white shirt. He was doing all the talking as the two got into the patrol car, the woman taking the wheel. They drove off.

  I went into the triplex’s foyer and pressed the button for apartment number three. The door buzzed open. Nobody asked who I was on the intercom. I looked around, but didn’t see an intercom. Maybe the building worked on the honour system. I opened the entrance door and walked up two flights to the third floor.

  A tall man in shirtsleeves waited in front of an open door, the numeral 3 on it. The tall man looked at me for a moment, his expression showing a hint of surprise.

  “Thought police come back,” he said. “You a police also?”

  “I bat for the other side.”

  “You criminal lawyer.”

  “Very nice. You got it right away from the baseball analogy?”

  The man shook his head. “Don’t know what means baseball analogy,” he said. “I’m recognizing from when I drive Grace to appointment at Spadina office. You walking into building, Grace say man out there Mr. Crang.”
/>   “May I come in?” I said. “I’m on a serious mission, but if the police have been here, you must already know.”

  “Grace dead,” he said. “Police tell.”

  Steve Lazslo was lean as well as tall, and he had a lachrymose expression. I didn’t get the impression it was a look brought on by the occasion of his wife’s death. It looked natural and permanent. Could be a Budapest thing. People from Buda were said to be happy-go-lucky, people from Pest were lachrymose. Or the other way around. Lazslo must have come from whichever was the grim side of town.

  His apartment was crowded with furniture. Probably everything that was missing from the condo on Lombard had been squeezed into this place. Lazslo sat on the sofa. I took a plush armchair. When I sat, I sunk down about two feet. It would take a hell of an effort when the time came to extricate myself from the depths of the plush.

  “Okay if I call you Steve, Steve?” I said.

  “Please.” The way he said it, the word came out “pliz.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Steve. The reason I’m here is to finish my duties as Grace’s lawyer.”

  “Grace say you good lawyer.”

  “She never offered an opinion one way or another in my presence.”

  “Grace never person for saying compliment.”

  “That’s not just kidding.”

  “She never do that, what you say, kidding.”

  “Probably made you and Grace an ideal couple,” I said.

  “Two peas in pod. Grace say all the time.”

  “Speaking as one of the peas, Steve, you know what Grace was doing all those nights at 32 Highbury?”

  “Never heard this Highbury until police say today. Grace tell me better I not know nothing. Have no information about where she go, what she do. She go out at night, do job, come home, say nothing. Just she glad to be home. Go on like that for five months. But she say yesterday, soon be over. Very soon, any day now.”

  For Steve, the tall, dark, silent Hungarian type, that qualified as an oration.

  “Tell me this, Steve. How did the cops find you so quickly?”